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Amok!
by
Up the bamboo ladder and into the little door,–so low that even Anak, with her scant twelve years, was forced to stoop,–she would dart when she espied Noa coming sedately down the long aisle of palms that led away to the fungus-covered canal that separated her little world from the life of the capital city.
There was coquetry in every glance, as she watched him, from behind the carved bars of her low window, drop contentedly down on the bench beneath a scarred old cocoanut that stood directly before the door. She thought almost angrily that he ought to have searched a little for her: she would have repaid him with her arms about his neck.
From the cool darkness of the bungalow came the regular click of her mother’s loom. She could see the worker’s head surrounded by a faint halo of broken twilight. Her mind filled in the details that were hidden by the green shadows–the drawn, stooping figure, the scant black hair, the swollen gums, the syrah-stained teeth, and sunken neck. She impulsively ran her soft brown fingers over her own warm, plump face, through the luxuriant tresses of her heavy hair, and then gazed out at the recumbent figure on the bench, waiting patiently for her coming.
“Soon my teeth, which the American lady that was visiting his Excellency said were so strong and beautiful, will be filed and blackened, and I will be weaving sarongs for Noa.”
She shuddered, she knew not why, and went slowly across the elastic bamboo strips of the floor and down the ladder.
Noa watched the trim little figure with its single covering of cotton, the straight, graceful body, and perfectly poised head and delicate neck, the bare feet and ankles, the sweet, comely face with its fresh young lips, free from the red stains of the syrah leaf, and its big brown eyes that looked from beneath heavy silken lashes. He smiled, but did not stir as she came to him. He was proud of her after the manner of his kind. Her beauty appealed to him unconsciously, although he had never been taught to consider beauty, or even seek it. He would have married her without a question, if she had been as hideous as his sister, who was scarred with the small-pox. He would never have complained if, according to Malayan custom, he had not been permitted to have seen her until the marriage day. He must marry some one, now that the Prince had gone to Johore, and his father had given up all hope of seeing him a hadji; and besides, the captain of the launch and the old punghulo, or chief, Anak’s father, were fast friends. The marriage meant little more to the man.
But to Anak,–once the Prince Mat had told her she was pretty, when she had come down to the wharf to beg a small crocodile to bury underneath her grandmother’s bungalow to keep off white ants, and her cheeks glowed yet under her brown skin at the remembrance. Noa had never told her she was beautiful!
A featherless hen was scratching in the yellow sand at her feet, and a brood of featherless chicks were following each cluck with an intensity of interest that left them no time to watch the actions of the lovers.
“Why did you come?” she asked in the soft liquid accents of her people.
There was an eagerness in the question that suggested its own answer.
“To bring a message to the punghulo,” he replied, not noticing the coquetry of the look.
“Oh! then you are in haste. Why do you wait? My father is at the canal.”
“It is about you,” he went on, his face glowing. “The Prince is coming back, and we are to be married. My father, the captain, made bold to ask his Excellency to let the Prince be present, and he granted our prayer.”
She turned away to hide her disappointment. It was the thought of the honor that was his in the eyes of the province, and not that he was to marry her, that set the lights dancing in his eyes! She hated him then for his very love; it was so sure and confident in its right to overlook hers in this petty attention from a mere boy, who had once condescended to praise her girlish beauty.